Re: [LAU] So what do you think sucks about Linux audio ?

On 07/02/13 16:24, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: I think you are right, assuming those who did the reverse engineering had never accepted the Steinberg terms then I guess they can distribute their code ... which certainly isn't VST but happens to work with plugins that are designed for it. This is a well established practice ... GNU is Not Unix, samba just happened to work with microsoft stuff and both survived intense legal scrutiny ... both are very important projects. I will buy commercial software occasionally if its worth it and runs on my systems but I prefer to use FLOSS licensed stuff where the developers have made their work publicly available ... for lots of reasons. However almost all the hardware I have is commercial to some extent. Surely if we want commercial hardware and software suppliers to respect and support Linux audio then we had better also respect and support the licensing they choose to release their work under, just as we expect them to respect the intentions of our copyleft licenses. I do believe that long term the FLOSS approach is stronger in a commercial as well as moral sense. In this case it is clearly the intention of Steinberg not to allow FLOSS implementations, even if their licensing has a legal loophole and is ineffective. It is of course possible to reject the whole idea of IP, licenses and so forth as invalid and unreasonable and go completely free. At least it is you are a small enough target avoid the attentions of local law-enforcement agencies, or perhaps if you live somewhere that does not enforce IP laws. But then it would be natural for companies that think they depend on licensing to reject us just as completely as we would reject them. Many hardware manufacturers see themselves that way. I think they could readily find other models of distribution and certainly several very successful corporations have already made a lot of money by embracing FLOSS, but many companies do not (yet?) see this. It is a bit difficult to work with audio without using something commercial in the hardware chain, especially if you want cheaper hardware and are not willing or able to spend huge amounts of time developing and tweaking DIY hardware. Maybe one day we will develop affordable FLOS hardware, we already have FLOSS plugin interfaces and perhaps effort is better spent supporting them. Simon